Christmas Day comes and goes too fast. We have all of my extended family staying this year and have had an amazing time. It’s especially special for the kids to have their cousins to play with – constant entertainment and fun!
We carried on the tradition of decorating our cookie lolly houses a few days before Christmas. Always a highlight…and I have to remind myself to switch off Mother-mode and let the kids go crazy on the lollies…it only happens once a year and they love it!
(A quick tip if you are doing these sometime…we cook up a bit of toffee over the stove and stick the houses together with that for the kids first. It dries rock hard straight away and eliminates tears and tantrums about walls caving in or roofs falling down whilst waiting for the icing to dry!)
The night before Christmas…
Finally Christmas morning arrived! I love their smiles and excitement as they open presents from Santa.
We were blessed with a beautiful, warm and sunny Christmas day so spent the morning playing at the playground testing the limits of the big swing. Let’s just say it can hold a lot of weight and go really, really high!
Back at Mum & Dad’s house we opened presents under the tree with the whole family. Then feasted on a MASSIVE turkey cooked by Dad in the webber with all the trimmings.
Sam choose the perfect present for Ty. A super cool puppet – he has a new best friend and entertained us all Christmas evening with his comedy act!
In the evening we headed down to the beach to meet up with lots of cousins, aunties, uncles and friends for some beach cricket, frisbee and a swim.
And that’s Christmas for 2012 all over and done with…I think we all felt like crashing with Tommy and Micah on the loungeroom floor!
Here’s our family Christmas card that didn’t make it to printing or posting, so let’s just pretend that you received it in the mail with a hand-addressed envelope and thoughtful message written inside 😉
We had fun taking the photos with the timer on the camera…I’m going to invest in a remote though because I was puffed after running back and forth 20 times to hit the shutter button!
Wishing you all a happy Christmas wherever you are and hope that happy memories are created in your home this year.
There is a lot of excitement in our house this week – with end of year parties, school finishing, family coming to stay and Christmas just around the corner. Christmas definitley gets a lot more fun as your children get older. We have been doing lots of fun things every day to make the holiday season even more exciting than it already is, I especially love the special traditions, both old and new, that we carry out each year.
This year, I could sit back and observe as the kids pretty much assembled and decorated the tree themselves! Oscar is tall enough to reach the top now so the decorations are spread out evenly and it was very important to find that “special spot” for our new decorations this year.
A few months ago I pulled out all of our Christmas books and started buying a few more to add to the collection until I had 24. Each night, before bed, the children take in turns choosing a book from under the tree and unwrapping it and that is what we read as our bedtime story. I’m making sure that we finish with a book that it more spiritual and reminds us of the true meaning of Christmas, so have labeled one book “do not open until Christmas Eve.” I’m loving this new tradition and the kids get especially excited when they open a new book that we haven’t read before.
The first book we opened was the Elf on the Shelf kit. We named our Elf “Elfy” (of course!) and there have been many nights when I’m lying in bed, just about to drift off to sleep and I remember that he hasn’t been moved yet so have to get up and find a new spot for him! Tommy is especially cute every morning when he runs out to find Elfy, then comes and reports his new location to us.
Because we were away for Christmas last year, it feels like forever ago since we last used the advent stockings. I’ve tried really hard to make sure that the activity that is pulled out each day is achievable and not too much effort after a busy day. We’ve found that the kids are really happy to do anything, they enjoy the tradition more than everything. I’ll list our activities below if you are looking for new ones. Also, it’s easier if I don’t choose the activity until the night before when I can be sure that is what I feel like doing the next day!
Top of the kids list of Christmas traditions is our “knock and run” Family Night. We cooked up a storm of treats on Sunday afternoon and delivered them last night to our friends and neighbours. Oscar was in stealth mode and was super fast at running, Lil liked to hide, then peek her head out and give the recipient a little wave and Tommy kept running away with the treats after knocking! We almost always get caught, but that’s half the fun!
The Christmas wreath I made a few years ago is still going strong. I’m sure I’ll have to make another one when we build a new house to match the colour scheme – perhaps I’ll have to sell this one with the house?!
Decorating Grandma and Poppy’s house one Sunday evening.
So, with just seven days to go, we are soaking up every little bit of Christmas atmosphere that we can because it will all be over with too soon and then we will have to wait a whole year to do it again!
ADVENT ACTIVITY IDEAS: Watch a Christmas movie about baby Jesus Write in Christmas cards for friends Take family photos for Christmas card Hang candy canes on the tree Go out for an icecream to celebrate the last day of school Go to the town Christmas party Play Christmas bingo Knock and run Buy a present to put under the Kmart giving tree Family games night Christmas cooking Pancakes for dinner Write postcards for cousins Make gingerbread houses Make Christmas lolly houses Make sand snowmen at the beach Watch a Christmas movie with popcorn Parcel for missionaries Sleepover in the loungeroom Get an icecream at the shop after dinner Make Christmas cookies Go to the park for a picnic dinner Strawberry picking Take treats to the aged care home Make a basket of Christmas goodies for a neighbour Leave out snacks for Santa and the reindeer Make rainbow playdough
I’m emerging from catching up after our latest trip to Queensland. We have been VERY lucky this year to have two trips to the Sunny state – the first was planned for awhile, but this most recent one happened because my littlest brother got married! We’re not complaining, it was the perfect excuse to escape and get stuck into some hot weather and soak up a bit of sun.
I was so happy that my morning sickness started getting a bit better the week before we left, so I could enjoy the trip without feeling rotten all the time. We were spoiled with a pool at Jaron’s sister’s house and made sure that we had multiple swims a day. Lil cracked us up with her swimming attire…always goggles, floaties and flippers. She is such a clown! The kids gained so much more confidence in the water being able to swim so much – one of the downsides to living in a cooler climate…it’s harder to go swimming so often.
Lil and Coda were so happy to be united again!
We surprised the kids (and ourselves) and had a holiday in our holiday and went to the Gold Coast for a night. We had planned on going to Seaworld for the day and found out that it was only an extra $40 to stay at the Seaworld Resort and have two days entry into the park. Such a great deal and lots of fun. We did heaps more swimming and learning and exploring.
But the highlight of our trip was seeing these two wed. The ceremony was beautiful – with a few “Cade” jokes included and Talissa looked stunning. Right now they are honeymooning in Bali (just a little bit jealous) but will be returning to us on Christmas Eve to settle not far away – horray for another Uncle and Aunty close by!
Us, on the way to the wedding
Tommy with his pre-wedding comb-over
Crazy, best friend cousins
A few days before the wedding, we visited the Brisbane Temple. We don’t have many opportunities to visit the temple – especially as a family so it was important to us to make sure the children had a chance to walk around and soak it all in.
Tommy had the perfect solution to keeping cool in the sweltering heat – and it didn’t have anything to do with dipping his feet in the fountain like Lil! As much as we love our getaways, it is always nice to get home. Although this time it would be good to be sent a few more degrees to add to our not-very-Summerish days! Fingers crossed Summer will be with us in full swing very soon!!!
On the weekend we had to go to the shops to do a few jobs. While we were there, the kids were excitedly playing on the escalators in Myer (poor, deprived children – there are no escalators in shops close to our home!) and we accidentally went a few floors higher than we needed to and ended up in the Christmas decoration section. I was secretly excited, I love Myer’s Christmas displays and as we were browsing through the decorations Jaron and I decided that we would each choose a new decoration for the Christmas tree. And not just for this year, every year from now on we will go back to Myer (play on the escalators) and let the kids choose any random decoration they like (it was hard not to influence their decisions, but we let them go for it!). I do like a Christmas tree with coordinated decorations, but I know that in a few years time, when our hand-picked decorations start taking over, we will all enjoy the tree even more and have fun looking out for “our own” decorations.
Jaron choose this Santa because it reminded him of a Santa he had growing up.
This is Lil’s sparkly butterfly – she was torn between all things pretty but after about 53 choices, finally settled on this one.
Tommy loves trains so I’m happy he picked something that reflects him at the moment.
I walked away with this pretty, sparkly hummingbird.
And Oscar was on the hunt for the “fanciest” decoration he could find! I didn’t expect him to go for something like this, but he loves it!!!
And that’s our new tradition – well, I don’t know if you can technically call it a tradition yet, because we’ve only done it once, but we’ll definitley be keeping this one!
Did you know it’s only 50 days until Christmas?! Today I started to get excited and might begin playing Christmas carols tomorrow… 50 days isn’t really long enough to enjoy Christmas festivities, is it?
